The Office

This is a group photo with my coworkers at the IEC External Relations Department. Keep your eye out for the man second from the right, Mr. Noor Mohammad, as you watch coverage of the election in Afghanistan. He is the IEC Spokesman and frequently appears on international news channels to comment on the process.

Vehicle Borne IED

About one hour ago a vehicle borne IED was detonated on Jalalabad Road killing several people. So far there haven't been any reports on the incident, but I know it was big because its location was about one kilometer from the Commission and we could hear and feel it in the office. The rumor is that there are several more bombers ready to attack. Almost every foreign government and UN agency has prohibited movement for the time being, and the road has been closed, so I may be stuck here for a while.

Today's attack was the fourth in the last three weeks. The first two I blogged about, and the third and fourth happened today (earlier this morning a number of rockets were launched into Sesh-Darak, the neighborhood that houses the NATO-ISAF compound). Although Kabul is big, I seem to be on the Taliban target map as all four attacks have taken place in close vicinity to my house or workplace.

Safety First

One of the more interesting aspects of my current trip in Afghanistan has been the level of security precautions that I encounter on a daily basis. My last trip, in 2006, was spent walking around various cities in Afghanistan, often by myself, without any security precautions taken. Working at the Election Commission has been a completely different experience.

Simply getting into the IEC entails passing through about four different checkpoints, where identification is verified, bags are searched, stationary and handheld metal detectors are used, and motor vehicles and laptops are checked by bomb-sniffing dogs. The compound is surrounded by concrete barriers, lookout towers, HESCO blast walls, an 8'x8' trench, and two layers of barbed wire. The checkpoints and compound grounds are guarded by Global Security, an international security company that is also responsible for safety at the Kabul airport. We feel relatively safe once inside.

The vehicles we travel in are also worth of note. Since my arrival I have been lucky enough to frequently get rides back and forth to the office with the UNDP-ELECT staff that is working at the IEC. Due to the the high-risk involved for election staff, and the location of the IEC on a high-target road which has frequently been attacked with RPGs and IEDs, the vehicles used are Toyota Land Cruisers armoured to withstand direct gunfire from an AK-47 and indirect IEDs of about fifteen kilos. Unfortunately, the Taliban regularly detonates explosives in much higher quantities - the blast yesterday was supposedly around 500 kilos. Because the production of armoured vehicles is prohibited in Afghanistan (imagine the Taliban running around in bullet-proof cars), the vehicles must be imported from Dubai, which results in a unit cost of around $100,000.

In the picture above I am standing with two of the drivers that have driven us for the last two months, Raz and Yousef. Behind us is one of the famous B6 Land Cruisers.

Car Bomb Explodes Near NATO Compound

A car bomb exploded at the heavily guarded NATO-ISAF compound in Kabul about an hour ago. According to BBC World, three people were killed and about seventy wounded. Again, the explosion happened very close to my neighborhood and a few blocks from my daily route to work. The Taliban has promised to disrupt the election process - the elections are now six days away - and it seems, at least for now, they are going after high-profile targets.

Bagh-e-Babur

Bagh-e-Babur (Babur's Garden) is one of the more famous parks and historical sites in Kabul. It is the final resting place for Zahiruddin Muhammad Shah, the founder of the Moghul Empire commonly known in Afghanistan as Babur Shah. Babur, a decendent of Chengis Khan, conquered Afghanistan in 1504 and eventually controlled large parts of India and Central Asia.
The park was restored several years ago by Agha Khan and on any given day you can find hundreds of people there playing cards, eating melon, and drinking tea. Parks in Kabul are very popular as the city is dirty and grass and trees are rare. They are also one of the few places where unmarried men and women can get away with sitting together, talking, and even holding hands without getting arrested. Pictures of my visit are below:


Babur's Tomb
A view of the park from the top of the hill

The entrance to Babur's tomb and some houses behind the park

People enjoying the day at the bottom of the hill

Around Kabul

This summer I have been spending all of my time at the IEC compound and have been unable to get good pictures of life in Kabul. Therefore, for those of you following the blog I am posting some pictures I took in 2006 while working for FINCA International. My job with FINCA entailed walking around the city and interviewing shopkeepers that had taken loans from FINCA. It provided plenty of opportunities for good photos. Enjoy.

Auto Repair Shops
Butcher Shop
A Bazaar in Kabul
Interviewing a Bean Seller

The Accreditation Process

One of the jobs the External Relations Department is spending a lot of time on right now is the processing and production of Accreditation Badges. Being accredited by the IEC and receiving a an Accreditation Badge gives election observers and political party and candidate agents access to polling centers on August 20th so they can observe the election from up close and asssure that it is free and fair.

In the pictures above I am working on processing some of the approximately 150,000 badges that the IEC will issue before election day.

Rocket Lands in Wazir Akbar Khan

Last night the Taliban launched a series of rocket attacks on Kabul. It seems that the main target was the Kabul Airport, but one of the rockets landed about four blocks from my house in Wazir Akbar Khan. It's not clear whether the rocket in Wazir was intentional, or if it strayed off course, but the area hosts a multitude of foreign embassies and international organizations and would make an appropriate target.

After the initial blast in my neighborhood woke me up, I could hear the rest of the rockets landing several kilometers away close to the airport. When the rockets ceased what sounded like a small gunfight began, lasting for about five minutes. Most likely, the security guards and Afghan Police in the area were blindly shooting toward where they thought the rockets were launched from.

The BBC has already reported on the incident. Here is the story.

Hearts and Minds

The Taliban just released their answer to the US Counter Insurgency Field Manual. The American version, written in 2006, stressed the reduction of civilian casualties in an effort to win Afghan "hearts and minds" in the war against al-Qaeda, and more recently the Taliban.

The Taliban's new manual, written in Pashto, and titled "Mujahideen Manual" (see the cover above), details its code of conduct for Taliban fighters. In what is good news for civilians and most foreign workers, and bad news for American and ISAF forces, the manual encourages limiting attacks to high profile targets, and lowering civilian casualties.

Al-Jazeera has posted excerpts from the Taliban manual on their site. You can access their story here.

This Old House

Last week my cousin took me to see some of the land in Kabul that my grandfather used to own. It is no longer in the family, but we wanted to take a few photos anyways. While we were there we stopped and saw my uncle's sister, who lives just a block or two away from where the pictures were taken.

Mantu

This weekend I went over to my cousin's house to help prepare and eat Mantu, one of my favorite traditional Afghan dishes. Mantu is a thin steamed dumpling filled with meat and onions and topped with yogurt, tomatoes, mint, and beans. It is supposedly an Uzbek dish, although I have also found it as far away as Istanbul. One of housemates, who is from Kathmandu, says that something very similar to Afghan Mantu is also eaten in Nepal.

PowerPoint to the People

As we get closer to the election we've been hosting an increasing number of meetings with national and international observer groups such as NDI, IRI, the US Embassy, and EU-EOM.

As part of the Observer Facilitation Unit, Eng. Tawab Salim and I help coordinate the meetings and assemble the information that will be presented. Above is a picture of our first meeting with international groups; I am busy changing the slide for the PowerPoint I put together for the event.

Khashe-e-Qaoum

Here I am chatting with two of my uncles in our family's other house in Kart-e-Sakhi. The property, which has been renovated in recent years, belongs to another one of my uncles who lives in the United States.

At the time the picture was taken I was being given an history lesson on my Khashe-e-Qaoum, which is a Dari word for relatives and family. Family relations are difficult to follow being here for just the second time in three years. My uncle did his best, though I did much more laughing than understanding.

ملا عبد السلام راکتی (Mula Abdul Salam Rakity)

This is Mula Abdul Salam Rakity, one of the forty-one presidential candidates in Afghanistan. Take a closer look at his name for second. See anything familiar? Believe it or not, the "Rakity" is a poor spelling for rocket(y) in English. Apparently, "Rakity" became the mulla's nickname during the Afghan-Soviet War when he was taking down large numbers of Russian aircraft with Stinger missiles. The charming fellow is also known to have spent time fighting alongside the Taliban. The good news for peace-loving Afghans is that he is not considered a serious contender in the elections.

NATOISAFLTCMSFSFSO

From left to right: me; LTC Royal Ripley; a US Foreign Service Officer whose name escapes me; and ........., from the US Embassy's Election Support Team. The photo corresponds to my earlier post about dinner at NATO-ISAF.

The House in Kart-e-Sakhi

Yesterday my cousin and I went to see my father's old property in Kart-e-Sakhi. It's a small piece of land with mud-brick walls (gil-karee), a few rooms that serve as single-family homes, and a couple of rent-paying shops in the front; one is a bakery (naan-baayi) and the other a regular corner store with smokes and soda. Right now, one of my other cousins lives in one of the rooms and has rented out the rest of the space on a system here called "grao." Instead of paying rent, tenants pay a large fee to the landowner up front, sometimes $20 or $30 thousand. The tenants then get to stay on the property indefinitely until the landowner repays the fee. It's essentially a long-term loan and the interest paid is in the form of the use of a private residence; a pretty good deal for the tenants as long as inflation stays under control. Anyways, here some pics of the exterior. Someday I may own this property myself.


Below is the "corner store."
The front of the building. Bakery is on left, corner store is on right. Look up above at the houses built into the mountain.This is a view of the alley on the side of the building. Again, the houses built into the hillside are amazing.
Below, my cousin, her son and I are standing in front of the bakery. They are built up high with the floor at waist-level to fit the tandoor oven beneath the floor.

Voter Education

Pictured above are two of the voter education posters being distributed across Afghanistan in advance of the upcoming presidential and provincial council elections. There is actually a professional artist at the Commission that draws and colors each and every one. Because the electoral process is very new to Afghanistan one of the IEC's duties is to educate voters on topics such as who they are voting for, how to vote, and what the polling centers will look like. The extremely low literacy rate, estimated to be around 28 percent, necessitates that widely distributed materials convey their messages using pictures and shapes, instead of words. In addition to printed materials, the IEC also hosts a "190" hotline which Afghans can call to have their election related questions answered. I just completed revising and editing the newest printed FAQ list which is being distributed now. The Commission also sends out teams of civic educators into the provinces--one of which was killed two weeks ago--to educate citizens living far from urban areas.

Shirpoor

Shirpoor is one better known and fasted growing neigborhoods in central Kabul . The fairly small fifteen to twenty block area is famous for its luxurious mansions and $10,000/mo rents. Many foreign companies, UN offices, and famous Afghan warlords all coexist peacefully and take up residence there. Some of the houses contain over forty bedrooms, several fully-equipped kitchens, and small sheds inside high walls that serve as living quarters for the cooks and guards, who often make less than $200/mo. Because of the extreme poverty that exists on every edge of the neighborhood, and the extreme wealth within it, Shirpoor is often given as proof of the international community's ignominious waste and detachment from the very people they are trying to help.

In the top picture you can see recently constructed office buildings that lay just behind a make-shift garbage dump, old Soviet tank remains, and the mud walls of a local resident's house. In the bottom picture is one of the typically ostentatious Shirpoor houses nearing completion.

Today's Update

Today was another fine day at the IEC working on external relations issues. Right now I am putting together a short presentation that will be given to election observers later this week. Attendees will include electoral NGOs such as IFES and NDI, and stakeholder national and supranational entities such as the US Embassy and the European Union. It sounds important, but it's really just a basic powerpoint from information you can mostly pull of the IEC website. And they are coming all the way to the IEC to get the info!

This evening was especially interesting. I was invited for dinner at the NATO-ISAF base by an American military officer I met at the IEC. We ate dinner, drank coffee, and had a great conversation on geopolitics with two State Department officials--one from the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (OCRS) and the other a foreign service officer--and a second US Army officer responsible for election-related security. It was reassuring to hear about the efforts being made on the part of the US forces to ensure the security of the elections, and in particular the election compound.

One of the State Department officials actually just graduated from Georgetown MSFS about fourteen months ago. We ended up knowing quite a few people in common, including my classmate Yushin, who is currently working at the OCRS in DC for the summer. She told me that there are a large number of MSFS grads working in Kabul right now. Apparently, one MSFS alum who I emailed back and forth with quite a bit from DC this spring, John Dempsey, was recently appointed one of Richard Holbrooke's top advisors on afghansitan.

Paghman

The only day I get off from work every week is Friday, and today I spent it by riding up to Paghman for the afternoon with my family. About a one hour ride from Kabul, Paghman is a small province that is famous for its clean air, water, and beautiful landscapes. Thousands of people from the capital head there every weekend for picnics, swimming, and to pick wild mullberries and cherries.

In the center of town there is an arc that looks very similar to the Arc De Triomphe in Paris. It was apparently built in the early twentieth century by King Amanullah and Queen Tarzi after their return from Europe.

Earlier this Morning

Work at the IEC has been picking up lately. Although the national staff does not seem to understand where I fit in, the UNDP-ELECT advisors, who are embedded in the External Relations Department, have had plenty for me to assist with. Most of my work consists of facilitating relationships with election observer groups and compiling and updating election-related information that is distributed to candidate agents, civil society organizations, and political parties.

Within the next few weeks the IEC will be opening a Media Center in a downtown hotel to accommodate the swath of national and international media that will be arriving in Kabul soon to cover the elections. My plan is to convince the head of my department to transfer my post there when it opens. The increase in international presence around the Commission is already noticeable. I regularly get to meet and chat with US Army and NATO public relations officers, reporters from papers such as the LA Times, and international TV correspondents hanging around the IEC for their next story.

Taking pictures of the compound is restricted due to security reasons, but today one of my coworkers snapped a few of me in the back of a briefing session for some of the presidential candidates' political agents. Turnout was not very good but it was still a great opportunity to relax and enjoy a cup of tea.

Mesjid-e-Haji Abdul Rahman

Here are a couple of pictures I took of the new Haji Adbul Rahman mosque while walking around the De Afghanaan neighborhood in Kabul this afternoon. Last time I was here in 2006 it was still under construction. Nobody seems to agree on who built it or even what its name is but it is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful new buildings in Kabul.

The Candidates, All Forty-One of Them

The posters on the wall above (a shot I took just around the corner from my house) represent just a fraction of the total number of candidates running in the 2009 presidential elections. Since there is no limit to the number of candidates who can run, and nomination by a political party is not necessary, voters will have an astounding forty-one candidates to choose from come August 20th.

The only candidate thought to have a chance to beat Karzai come August is the widely popular Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a former Foreign Minister in Karzai's government. Although he is the clear favorite among people in Kabul, most here still feel that victory by Karzai is inevitable, not least because of perceived American favoritism. Perhaps to counter that perception Ambassador Eikenberry has been making a point to appear publicly with a number of major candidates, including Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani.

Last spring I wrote a short election summary for the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, DC. If you are interested you can download and read the file here.

The Penthouse Office

Here is a picture of my office at the External Relations department. In the picture with me is Eng. Abdul Tawab Salim, Observer Facilitation Officer at the IEC. All together there are four people working in the office, which is very similar to the trailers that construction companies in the United States use on long-term projects. We are separate from the large main building and interestingly fall just outside the brand new blast wall being built around the head office.

National Security Advisor James Jones

On Tuesday Obama's NSA, James Jones, stopped by the IEC accompanied by Ambassador Eikenberry. I did not get to attend the meetings so there is not much to tell. The most interesting thing I saw was the security detail entering and leaving our compound. In the picture above from left to right are Ambassador Eikenberry; James Jones; and Azizullah Ludin, President of the IEC.

By the way, James Jones is a graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. That's why he gets to sit in the middle : )

Ambassador Eikenberry Visits Us at the IEC

On Monday the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, visited the IEC. During his visit he toured IEC facilities and held a press conference that appeared on numerous Afghan and international television stations. I attended the press conference and actually made it onto the news on several channels—something I found out while watching TV and eating my breakfast this morning. (I will be posting the video if one becomes available.)

Eikenberry’s statements regarding the election process were fairly broad and predictable. His primary message was that of the Obama administration’s policy of neutrality towards the presidential candidates—and for good reason. Surprising as it may sound to Westerners following the developments in Afghanistan, many Afghans are convinced that the Obama administration favors Karzai and will actively interfere to ensure his re-election. Karzai came to power in 2002 when he was named interim president of the transitional government. He was subsequently elected to his first term as president in 2004.

Electricity in Kabul

The most noticeable change in Kabul since my last visit to Afghanistan is the existence of twenty-four hour electricity throughout the city. People I have spoken to here are convinced that Obama turned the power on—apparently the electricity came two days after his inauguration.

According to various new sources the new power is the result of an agreement between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. The agreement assures the supply of the new power—up to 150MW by the end of 2009—through newly constructed 420 kilometer supply lines financed largely by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Rockets Fired at Bagram

Yesterday several rockets fired by insurgents hit Bagram Air Base and killed two American soldiers. The American base is approximately forty kilometers northeast of Kabul.

A few people here at the IEC claimed to have heard the rockets explode and seen the smoke rising in the distance, though it seems unlikely that what they witnessed was from Bagram given that the compound where we work is about thirty-five kilometers away. It is, however, very normal to hear what seem to be US airtrikes in the distance. Every so often you can feel the ground shake and loud booming sounds in the distance.

The IEC is situated in Pul-charkhi on the outskirts of Kabul--a bit northeast of the red "Jalalabad" arrow on the map above. Our neighbors here on Jalalabad Road are the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) compound and Camp Phoenix, an American military installation that trains the Afghan National Army (ANA).